W. Gene Corley, 1935-2013

Engineer who investigated WTC collapse was son of small-town contractor

March 06, 2013|By Rachael Levy, Chicago Tribune reporter

W. Eugene Corley in a testing building at CTLGroup in Skokie. (CHRIS WALKER, CHICAGO TRIBUNE)

W. Gene Corley was a structural engineer who specialized in figuring out why buildings fell down.

Mr. Corley led the federal investigation of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001. He also investigated the 1993 destruction of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, following an FBI raid; the 1995 bombing and collapse of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City; and the 1999 collapse of a construction crane at Milwaukee's Miller Park.

"Gene was a pioneer in what is commonly known as forensic structural engineering," said Jeffrey Garrett, president and chief executive officer of CTLGroup in Skokie, where Mr. Corley was senior vice president. "He investigated all sorts of building distress, building failures, structural failures of all kinds. He was tireless."

Mr. Corley, 77, died of cancer Friday, March 1, in Midwest Palliative and Hospice CareCenter in Glenview, his daughter, Anne Baum said. He was diagnosed with cancer after returning from Switzerland in August. He was a resident of Glenview.

He had no plans to retire, Garrett said. "The few times I got to speak with him over the last five months, he'd say he was coming back to work in March or April," Garrett said. "He loved this too much. He loved solving that mystery — why things fell down."

Born and raised in Shelbyville in central Illinois, Mr. Corley was influenced from a young age by his father, a contractor who built single-family homes, shopping malls and grocery stores.

"I was on building sites even before I was big enough to crawl," Mr. Corley told the Tribune in 2001.

He graduated from Shelbyville High School in 1954 and went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He started out studying architecture, but didn't think he could draw well enough. So he switched to engineering, receiving a bachelor's, master's and doctorate, all at U. of I.

He met his wife, Lynd, through the glee club while both were students. He was president of the men's glee club, and she of the women's. They were married for 53 years.

"He had a brilliant mind and that was one thing I was really attracted to," his wife said. "I was a musician. In some ways we were doing similar things, on different paths. Music is based on math, so maybe that was part of the attraction."

Lynd Corley and her daughter said Mr. Corley worked hard but always made time for family. "He had a great way of balancing all of his international travel and commitments," Anne Baum said.

After completing his education, Mr. Corley designed bridges for the Army Corps of Engineers. In the 1960s, he turned down a job with NASA working on the lunar rover program, and took a position at the Portland Cement Association, a nonprofit that represents cement companies. He later went with Construction Technology Laboratories, now CTLGroup, when it was spun off from Portland Cement as a for-profit company.

In both jobs, Mr. Corley studied the effects of fire on various metals, which proved crucial for his World Trade Center investigation. Early in his career at Portland Cement, Mr. Corley was instrumental in researching concrete construction.

"That in large part helped develop his reputation in structural engineering and specifically concrete," Garrett said.

Mr. Corley's expertise led to his high-profile work on major investigations.

Mr. Corley also spent time developing guidelines for building codes and licensing engineers. According to Garrett, Mr. Corley was on the Illinois structural engineering board and a former president of the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying.

Visitation will be from 4 to 7 p.m. Wednesday followed by services at N.H. Scott and Hanekamp Funeral Home, 1240 Waukegan Road, Glenview. There also will be a visitation Thursday in Shelbyville.